The online as offline

The print medium is not the same as the web-based medium, but we still have a tendency to approach the two as if they were the same when it comes to information communication. More specifically, in many newspaper offices in India, the internet and print editions are managed similarly to the point of expecting to reap equal profits from both (at least, that's how the management is modeled). In fact, because the internet does not have space restrictions as stringent as those imposed by a newspaper, and because stories can be uploaded as and when they happen as opposed to having to wait for a day, editors actually believe that such freedoms could only work to the publication's advantage.

Eventually, when the results come in reflecting the newspaper's poor performance on the web, the editors' first reaction is to question the editorial team responsible for managing the internet-desk. If that doesn't work, money is seen to be the problem: the page is redesigned, more funds are pumped in to spruce up the looks and navigation, and the amount of interactive content is increased. All these are fine initiatives, but unfortunately they aren't solutions. They do to the newspaper what taking longevity pills will do to a patient of cancer: he might live longer, but the blight will continue to spread until its death-grip is complete. At this juncture, many people also think that if they took a few steps back, reanalysed the problem, decided to just drop the unlimited space and instant-post assumptions, and rolled out the web edition thereon, things would be fine.

They wouldn't. We forget the effects of mismanagement in the interim period. Misguided decisions introduce their own set of problems into the machine, problems that are more systematic and resilient than the problems caused by assuming there's a lot of space and a lot of time. This mismanagement could manifest in the attitude toward web-based journalism, in the fashion of structuring the editorial team, or in thinking the way the internet-desk communicates with other departments in the newspaper is the way the print-desk does it, too.

Looking at it broadly, the attitude toward web-based journalism and the way the organization is structured become coincidental when those calling the shots are the misguided ones. The web-based medium serves an audience quite different from the one served by the written medium. Knowing that that is so, what sense does it make to have an editor for the internet edition who works as though he's working with the print edition? Because of the limitation on space being absent, for instance, the consequence has been the overloading of web-pages with content - as if it's an online newspaper with a hundred pages.

Very few editors in India decide to leave the sub-standard stories that didn't make the cut to the newspaper alone and instead turn their attention toward enhancing the impression of existing stories. Very few editors use the extra space available to serve every newspaper's original goal: to get the news across. And if ever they fail to do that effectively, it won't matter what else they get right. It's like reducing expenditures by eliminating needs only to buy something that will never be used simply because it comes at a heavily discounted price. If you want to continue to help your cause, use extra space to maximise the benefits arising from good journalism. Don't try to maximise the channels of revenue by exposing readers to the products of sub-standard work.

This matter of benefit-maximisation - while situated in the print framework - matters more on content than on anything else. This is because the most that can be done to a newspaper in terms of its design is to remove it from the way of easy reading as much as is possible. On the web, however, benefits can be maximised by more than just making the reading area less cluttered. There's not only more space but there are also other forms of data-expression. Now, journalists don't just have to choose between using an image or writing some 200 words to convey an idea: they have to pick between interactive infographics, videos, images, and audio clips to convey the message most effectively.

Subsequently, a collateral advantage of publishing on the web is that it gives the publishers an option to capitalise on multi-form content: the more elaborate the news delivery is, the costlier it could become to access it. All such aspects of online publishing have to be managed using a single voice of authority at the helm because their mismanagement is tied in closely with the failure of news-delivery. If the writing, editing, accounts, and web design departments operate autonomously with sizeable communication gaps between them, the reading-the-newspaper-online experience is going to be fragmented and as scatter-brained an affair as the logic behind the divided support driving the initiative.



The internet comes with a host of opportunities and that remains the biggest reason yet for publishers to move to the web to push their content. However, it seems shortsighted and in poor judgment that the people who decide to move online forget that so many opportunities can only come with so many chances for making mistakes. And they make those mistakes frequently and, more worrying, increasingly systematically. The important thing is to not let mismanagement off the hook all that easily - they leave a Yeti-sized footprint behind that must be erased completely before beginning to make way for a new working model.

[caption id="attachment_23041" align="aligncenter" width="529"] The Times of India is one Indian newspaper that seems to have taken to online publishing well. Their internet publishing mechanism seems well-oiled, and their articles, well-chosen (albeit from the pool of articles they have to choose from). Most importantly, auxiliary systems such as a self-administered payment gateway, smart pagination and a proliferation of their online services that moved at a pace more to their comfort than of the offline edition ensured that users received a an all-round sense of satisfaction when they logged on and off the ToI website.[/caption]